Posts tagged Paul Newman

Joe Morella and Frank Segers (going through the terrible twos) loving every minute of it. We launched this blog in April, 2011 and have been heartened by your response.

Enough about our anniversary. What about the anniversary of some great classic movies.

Some of our favorites, The Birds, Hud, and Love With the Proper Stranger, are celebrating their 50th anniversary! Now that’s staying power.

If you’ve missed any of these classics see them immediately.

The Birds was director Alfred Hitchcock’s last really good film. It stars Tippi Hedron and Rod Taylor, but, of course, the real stars are Hitchcock and the winged creatures who he makes terrifying instead of benign. And let’s give some credit to the wrtiers. It was Daphne du Maurier’s story and Evan Hunter’s screenplay.

Hud is one of Paul Newman’s best pictures. A modern day western about a man with no soul. Patricia Neal won an Oscar for her role as the savvy housekeeper who spurns his advances. Melvyn Douglas won a Best Supporting Oscar for playing his principaled, and disgusted with him. father. Brandon de Wilde, a good actor who died much too young, plays his nephew. It was one of Newman’s many Academy nominations, and losses, for Best Actor.

Love With the Proper Stranger is one of Joe’s favorite films and stars Steve McQueen and Natalie Wood, both at the height of their careers. It’s a rare breed, a romantic comedy/drama. It deals with issues such as commitment and illegal abortion, but, yes, it’s still a warm, loving film.

And 50 years ago, when the music from movies still had a huge influence, the hit song (and Academy Award winner) was “Call me Irresponsible.”

Newman as a down-at-the-heels gumshoe named Harper picks up a framed photograph of the woman portrayed by Winters, and shows it to Wagner’s suspicious playboy character.

Newman: She used to be a pretty hot young starlet. What happened to her?

Wagner, laughing uproariously, blurts out: She got fat!

The next shot, of course, opens with Winters’ character — best described as blowsy — scarfing down a large meal at a local eatery.

Hello, everybody. Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, back with another look at Shelley Winters thriving love life back when she was indeed a hot young starlet. We are indebted, of course, to the actress’ own recollections as provided in her 1980 autobiography, Shelley: Also Known As Shirley.

In our Dec. 18 blog, we covered the time a 24-year-old Winters had to flee into a chilly night from her studio dressing room to escape the enthusiastic advances of a 43-year-old Nelson Eddy, of all people. This was back in 1944 when both were making Knickerbocker Holiday.

But Winters had more congenial experiences with the following:

Lawrence Tierney: Winters relates an odd tale of winding up in a Sunset Strip restaurant as World War II ended, accompanied by a Nazi sympathizer and the tough guy actor reliably known for fast fists. After Tierney had heard enough from the Nazi sympathizer, he took one look at my anguished face; then he casually picked up (the man) and threw him down the length of the bar, crashing into all the glasses and beer bottles just like in a western…Then he grabbed me and we got out fast. Later, he asked, “would you like to go to a motel with me?” The only answer I could think of was: “Would it take long?”…And it didn’t. So I spent the night of VE Day after the long war with a strange sad actor sleeping at my side…”

William Holden: It was Christmastime in 1949 at the time Winters was working on Paramount’s The Great Gatsby starring Alan Ladd. The actress found herself attending a seasonal bash at the studio’s Writers Building, which always had wild and wooly parties. I found myself drinking a large vodka…and dancing with William Holden. Cornell Wilde …yelled, “Bill, we’re out of ice.” Holden took my hand and made for his dressing room across the street to get ice. Bing Crosby was in his dressing room next door — with Joan Caulfield — also looking for ice. I don’t exactly remember how it happened, but the situation developed in such a way that we forgot about the importance of the ice. So cut only to: Waves pounding on the beach, trees swaying in the storm. (Winters’ rendezvous with Holden became an annual event.) I must say our brief love affairs which lasted from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. Christmas Eves had more fun and happiness than many other relationships in my life…

Marlon Brando: Winter’s describes Brando as a “sometime lover.” As neophyte stage actors who couldn’t afford heated New York apartments, she slept with him to, among other things, keep him warm. Later, when Brando made a huge splash in A StreetcarNamed Desire, Shelley caught an early benefit performance. When Brando was onstage, all you could do was feel, the sexual arousal was so complete…The only other time I experienced it was when I saw Elvis Presley perform live in Las Vegas; men tell me that Marilyn had it for them.

That’s it for now. We’ll catch up with more of Shelley’s flames — two in particular — in a future blog. So, stay tuned.

Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your Classic Movie guys, reflecting on the Academy’s quirk of casting, in what in effect are, sympathy votes. And, please, enjoy today’s great photos of two stars at their physical peaks. Ain’t they gorgeous?

In the history of Academy Awards there are several instances when the voting members of the Academy have obviously let their emotional feelings for a particular actor warp their judgement of a particular performance in a specific film.

In other words, some Oscar winners, though worthy of the award, were given it for the wrong reasons and the wrong picture.

This “consolation Oscar” trend all started back in 1935, when Bette Davis received her first win for the mediocre film “Dangerous.” It was really just a programmer for her home studio, Warners. And it was, at best, a typical performance for the melodramatic actress.

BUT the previous year, 1934, on loan out over at RKO, Davis had given a superlative performance as the evil prostitute Mildred in the Somerset Maugham classic, “Of Human Bondage.” AND she hadn’t even been nominated!

Studio politics undoubtedly played a big part in this. Studios tended to block vote for actors in their own studio films.

So the Academy members corrected their error by not only nominating her in 1935 but by giving her the Oscar she should have gotten the previous year.

Then in 1960, the Academy did it again. The gave Elizabeth Taylor the Best Actress Award for a mediocre performance in an embarrassing film, “Butterfield 8.”

Yet everyone knew it was an Award for Liz herself, and her perseverance at having come through a life threatening illness shortly after she’d lost her husband (Mike Todd) in a tragic accident.

Besides she’d lost the Oscar in the two previous years for really good (nominated) performances in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” in 1958 and “Suddenly Last Summer,” in 1959.

When Paul Newman lost the Oscar in 1982 for his superb performance in “The Verdict,” it seemed the Academy was just never going to recognize his talent. He’d already lost three times before.

But “Gandhi” was the darling film of 1982, and garnered many Oscars including one for Ben Kingsley in the Best Actor Category.

However, once again, Academy members made it right by nominating and voting for Newman for Martin Scorsese’s “The Color of Money,” in 1986. Even Newman knew it wasn’t his best work, although he and costar Tom Cruise give solid performances.

Poor Newman and Taylor. Sad to win for a so-so performance when you’ve given so many really good ones. Bette Davis, at least won a second Award and continued getting nominations for years after her “consolation Oscar.”

Today guest contributor Larry Michie, who writes our BOOKS 2 FILM blogs, came across this bit of movie flotsam. We bet you, like us, were not aware of that other Butch Cassidy movie.

Here’s Larry:

“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” perfectly played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford, is possibly the most popular Western movie ever, along with George Stevens’ “Shane” and Fred Zinnemann’s “High Noon” (for a slightly older generation) and maybe Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch” (my own favorite). (Frank favors Sergio Leone’s masterpiece,“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” while Joe’s pick is Howard Hawk’s “Red River.”)

But hold on, pardner! A version of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” was filmed 15 years before the Newman-Redford version. It was a real stinker, but let’s give it some credit — it got there first.

Paramount Pictures filmed a cheapo oater (oater being the generic name used by Variety in the old days to categorize a Western).

The movie was called “Wyoming Renegades,” and came out in 1954”

Butch was played by Gene Evans, a generic bad guy, and William Bishop was the Sundance Kid. Bishop died five years after the movie was made, but Evans lived on to 1998. Although the cast of “Wyoming Renegades” included such reasonably well-known B-list thespians of the time such as Philip Carey and Martha Hyer, Evans and Bishop never even came close to attaining the star power of the Newman-Redford combination.

The movie’s plot: A member of the gang named Brady Sutton got out of the state pen, along with Sundance, but while Sundance promptly rejoined Butch, Sutton went straight, resuming a blacksmith career back in his home town.

His girlfriend, played by Hyer (with a huge head of frighteningly yellow hair), promptly began setting the wedding date. But wait! There was trouble! Butch Cassidy and his gang came into town and robbed the bank. Lots of bad things happened.

It’s all too dreary to report at length, but clearly the movie was an earlier version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. There was even a reference to The Hole in the Wall Gang, and there was casual mention of Butch’s real name, LeRoy Parker.

One amusing landmark aspect of the plot: At the grand climax shootout (staple of every oater), all the women in town armed themselves with rifles and rounded up the bad guys, shooting a few who didn’t take them seriously. Give a big cheer for the pre-feminist uprising!

The movie is clocked at 73 minutes, and the director was Fred F. Sears.